Props

Last night brought us two back-to-back episodes of Glee. The first of them, "Props," felt to me like the better of the two hours... though, of course, anyone who has read my reviews of Glee before won't be surprised, knowing what I normally think of competition episodes.

A quick side trip here before I talk about the episode itself. The hash tag crap FOX is doing all over the place now? Horrible. They've been doing it for a while now, but what finally drove me over the edge was the moment this week when Sue tells Kurt he has to cross-dress and calls him "Porcelina," then "#Porcelina" appears on screen. This seriously makes me contemplate not watching live TV on FOX anymore. So if the point is to drive viewers to other avenues like Hulu or their web site, mission accomplished. But given how networks always seem to be whining about dwindling viewer numbers, my guess is this is not their intended effect. So they'd better cut it the hell out.

So... the episode itself. It really is a shame to me that Tina has received so little time on the show that even the "previously on Glee" guy was quite snarky about pointing it out. Because the time that focused on her tonight was pretty stellar. For one thing, she killed the Celine Dion song (and held her own with Lea Michele in the closing duet, "What a Feeling"). Then there was the great scene where she stood up for Rachel with Madame Tibideaux; following Tina's earlier awesome episode this season where she helped her boyfriend Mike, she's now probably responsible for getting two people into college.

Even better was the continuation of the domestic abuse storyline with Coach Beiste. While I still wish the show had offered us a bit more context on the whole thing and actually showed the disintegration of her relationship with Cooter, the fact is that Dot-Marie Jones was Emmy worthy in all of her big scenes this episode. The scene in which she confronted Puck in the locker room was especially surprising, as we've never seen such good acting from Mark Salling either. It's often said that one mark of a good actor is in how other actors step up and perform better when working with them; by that measure, I think Dot-Marie Jones proved herself one of the best on the show in this episode.

But there were a couple parts of the episode that didn't work as well for me. For one, the lackluster Prom episode of last week now seems even worse to me, because it interrupted the narrative flow for the Rachel storyline. Last week, she seemed to be coming to grips with her failed NYADA audition. This week had to open up with a rather unnecessary solo for her just to get her character back to the place she left off two weeks ago. It was a waste of time that could have been spent on the other great material in the episode.

And speaking of great material, we had Tina's body-swapping dream sequence. While a lot of fun, this felt like a squandered opportunity to me. I feel as though the concept could easily have carried an entire episode. For the few actors that actually got to perform a fair amount as the alternate characters (Cory Monteith and Mark Salling as Kurt and Blaine, Matthew Morrison and Jane Lynch as Sue and Schu), there were some truly funny moments. But the rest of it all was so brief, crammed into a single 10-minute span between commercial breaks, that it was essentially just a bunch of sight gags delivered by the costume department. It just plain would have been fun to spend a whole episode in the alternate reality.

The only other major musical number I think I haven't mentioned was Beiste and Puck's duet on Taylor Swift's "Mean." Though not the most technically impressive performance, it certainly landed with emotional heft.

Overall, I'd have to say this was on its way to being a great episode, but was ultimately brought down a peg by, appropriately enough, too much Rachel. I'd call it a B+.

As for hour two? Well, unlike the show itself, I'm not going to cover it all in a single night.